


We used to be

by Darke_Eco_Freak



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Cannibalism, Eddie is Max, Ghosts, Other, Post-Apocalypse, Slice of Life, There's a Ghost Road Trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 16:37:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16538273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darke_Eco_Freak/pseuds/Darke_Eco_Freak
Summary: They used to be Eddie Brock, investigative journalist. They used to be Venom, anti-hero. They used to be he, and they, and it, but then the world burnt to ash all around them, and now all they are is a feral scav with a legend's name.





	We used to be

**Author's Note:**

> Mainly and entirely inspired by Mad Max: Fury Road playing on HBO last weekend and me not being able to help myself from doing this AU. Eddie is Max and parts of the Venom movie are mentioned but nothing spoiler specific, just people and things without context. This does spoil Fury Road though so watch out for that if you haven't seen it yet.

Later, when the radiation calms and green things push their way through the sour soil of this world. When every breath stops being pain and blood, when they can think and speak and be, **_later_** ; they’ll think it’s funny. How there are creatures out in this big wide universe, ones that exist to extinguish and exhaust life. How there are warlords that own galaxies and conquerors that want to destroy half of all life. How there’s meteors and there’s climate collapse and so so many things that could kill this tiny little planet dead, and how none of those things manage to do it.

Later, when they think about the end, they’ll crack a broken grin and grunt a hoarse laugh, because when did humanity ever let someone else beat them? The world doesn’t die because the klyntar finally find them, after all the years of living on borrowed time. No giant bigger than they can imagine comes to eat them and warring species don’t catch them in the crossfire. There's no invasion, no war, no last stand against a common enemy. None of that happens.

What happens, and this is harder to remember but not something they’ll forget, is that the wrong men get into the right places. They don’t remember names, or faces, but they remember the words. The hate. All across the world, simmering, boiling, until it all caught up in one blazing bright fire and burned everything down.

They were a reporter then, someone that followed the news. They were here when the first bomb dropped, far away from their home, so far. No time to hide, no time to run, just enough time to become Them and dig down as far as they could go. Not far enough, not deep enough, but enough to survive the first awful seconds. When the world exploded into raw, pure energy and they burned; down to their atoms they burned.

What hurt more? The heat or the sound? The shockwave flaying flesh from bone, bone from marrow, marrow from existence? Or was it the fire eating away at their shaking, breaking body, killing them faster than they could heal, reducing them to a bloody puddle, barely alive?

They shudder, they always do. Those few seconds almost killed them as dead as everything else. Weighed down on them turning seconds into eternities, and eternity was beautiful.

They survived though, they always do. They’re survivors now. They crawled their way out of their hole, a burnt crisp moving through the new world. They ate the bodies they found, ashes in their mouth, dry in their throat, but something for their belly. They choked down irradiated meat, crunched on glowing bones until they were something more than a wispy shadow.

Radiation couldn’t hurt them. They’d survived out in the depth of space, passing too close to stars, almost disappearing into black holes. Nuclear bombs were terrible, horrible forces of destruction, but they were nothing compared to the nature of stars. Their human side had never seen anything so terrible, their klyntar had, and together they taught each other through this new terror.

Hiding during the day, finding bits of cloth to wrap around their bare body, because the heat was too much for them. They couldn’t form as clothes to protect their skin, hid in their stomach instead, and let rags suffice.

Moving across this waste took time, stopping to scavenge took time, but they had all the time in the world, didn’t they? No one to get back to, no home probably, no Annie, no Dan, no Mrs Chen, no Mary, no Eddie Brock. Out here in the wastes they can be Venom, but they can be Max too. Mould themself into a legend, a myth, so when they show up, no one is ever too suspicious. And when they disappear again, no one cares too much, because legends never die. 

* * *

“Where did you get this?” a wife breathes, eyes bright in a way they wouldn't've been a hundred days ago. They’re glad, to make her happy, to help take some of the tension away from her shoulders.

They do not know these women; fought alongside them, fought and bled for them, but they do not know them. And these women do not know _them_ , but they are trying. The wives let them into the citadel with all their things, they don’t have to dress down to be let up, and that’s a trust they haven’t had in a very long time. And when they reach into their pockets, no one goes for a weapon. Trusting them.

“West, thirty days west,” they answer, pulling out another book. The pages are crumpled, cracking, but the words are still there. They think they know this one, a story about a man stealing God’s Book and running off into infinity. They don’t think they ever finished it.

Furiosa isn’t there to meet them, one of the wives said she was out on a gas run, and they’re sad. They like Furiosa, she’s strong, would be a Good Host they think teasingly. She handled their blood the way the War Boy couldn’t. He thought the lumps were killing him, but they know their blood was killing him faster than any tumour.

If he lived, he wouldn’t have made it past the second week.

“There’s settlements out there?” the Dag murmurs, pawing through the books with less than careful hands. They think about stopping her, careful fingers on her wrist, but Toast pulls her hand away instead and they stay hunched against the wall.

There’s so many people here to greet them in this sun washed room. The four wives left over and the vuvalini too; all people with a reason to like them. They can’t remember the last time they knew so many people, or when so many people were happy to see them. An old ache rears its head, a longing, for home, for people who’ve been dead for years and years and maybe decades now. Who can keep time anymore in a world like this?

What’s the point of using human years, they think, when they’re not even human anymore? Which is a good point.

“Uh, hmm, no, there’s…ruins,” they answer, after too long, always too long, but the wife doesn’t mind. They’re used to Max and his strange ways. Max who lives nowhere lest the ghosts in his head find him and tear him limb from limb.

At least that’s what they’ve heard. So many stories about Max; Mad Max, the road warrior, riding historic on the fury road. They almost sound mythical, a legend too big to be real, but they are. Maybe not the way these people think, but they are. They've seen most everything out here in these wastes, warlords and thunderdomes and radiation mutated monsters, had a taste of all those and more. 

“Ruins out west? We’ll mark them in the maps then, before you go again,” Capable says, so sure and set, capable. Good name for her. Her eyes sparkle like the glint of sunlight off water, or like the splash of kree blood on metal. Both are beautiful, and they’ll never see either again.

They nod, more of a dip of the head that buries their face further into their “ _scarf_ ”. The citadel is cooler than outside, lets them creep out through pours and form into something innocuous. They’re more one now than they ever have been, so many years of talking only to themself, years of forgetting how to use vocal cords entirely.

Lurking in bones or covering weathered, delicate flesh, it doesn’t matter anymore, but sometimes it does. When they’re around civilization again, when they have to hide again, or risk being hunted down across these wastes. They’ve been hunted before, they know animal fear and animal fury. They can rip through entire gangs, on their own, but they prefer not to anymore.

Solitude suits them.

“What do you want in trade?” Toast asks, spreading her hand to cover the few books they’ve brought and…oh. They didn’t, they didn’t bring these as barter. Don’t have to. They’ve got rations in the car, enough for another fifteen days on the road, and they have actual barter too. These were gifts, something for the few friends they have now.

Maybe that was sentimental foolishness, instincts that should be long dead, but nothing about them ever stays dead. And when they look up, meet the wife’s eyes, they see Dan there, smiling at them soft and genuine. Same colour, warm brown, healthy brown, a river bed, a tree trunk.

“Brought em, for you,” they grunt, tightening around their throat, forming around their chest, heavy and real. They know where Dan was when the bombs fell, back home, San Francisco home, and they know that doesn’t exist anymore. Dan is just another ghost, haunting them from a living woman’s eyes, but a ghost all the same.

Toast keeps their gaze, searching for what? These people call her Toast the Knowing but what does she know? How? The radiation out here, it mutated things; plants, animals, why not people too? Mutants existed back in the before, plenty of them died, but maybe not all. Maybe Toast can crawl inside people’s head without realising she can, hears the truth behind their lies and takes it for intuition.

What does she hear in their head? Behind the bass deep roar and shouting voices from everywhere and nowhere at once? Nothing good maybe, nothing sensible. They aren’t human, and their mind isn’t whole; they’re mad after all.

But Toast doesn’t seem to care about that, she picks up one of the books, the one they might know and opens it in the middle. Never looks away as she runs her finger over a line, then a paragraph, all the way to the bottom of the page. Dan’s eyes bore into them, almost accusing, like when they first told him they were whole again.

“Seems like good barter to me,” Toast tells them, and they know there’s no arguing with her. If the wives have a leader, they do not but _if_ they did, Toast would be the closest thing to it. She’s vicious, and knows, and when she brokers her deals no one ever disagrees. Even the wild man, Mad Max, cannot argue with her.

So they accept what she offers them in trade. Parts for their car, bullets for their guns, food for their belly, and a place to spend the night if they want it. They take everything but the place to sleep, not used to staying here with all the noise. No one argues when they say as much and no one calls after then when they slink away, following the clang of metal down to the workshop where their new car waits.

The war boys there don't look up when they arrive, don't acknowledge the former blood bag walking around, but the war boys know they're there. They can taste it in the fear spiking in their blood, all these were mere pups when Imperator Furiosa brought the Wives home and changed the citadel forever. They respect Furiosa, might even love her, definitely love the Wives, and they all know this strange feral is important to those woman so these new boys know better than to try anything. The boys even leave them a nice wide space to work on their new car. And they do. They service the  engine, patch some belts, clean the fans. They grease up their face and dirty their hands, sweat clean and simple.

A war pup brings them a meal, rice paste and some kind of stew, shyly holding the plate out to them with big eyes and a pinched up mouth. He reminds them of an actual pup, tentatively asking permission to hang around, and they give it. When they lean against the wall to scarf down their food, they don't shoo the pup off, and they even let him stay when they start work again. They know these pups are always learning, any opportunity is precious to them, and they like children. Glory, they liked her. Anne and Dan’s Tommy, sweet baby, they liked him.

The war pup is handy to keep around, fetches and carries whatever they ask, and never crowds them. They manage a good few hours in the garage, patching and fixing whatever they can. There’s so much here after all, parts like they haven’t seen in a long, long while hidden away in nooks and crannies, waiting to be found.

The war pup brings them another meal sometime after the sun sets. They’re deep in the citadel, surrounded by rock all around but they feel the sun set. The air runs cooler and the people grow quieter, night time is danger to most. Roving bands scour the wastes at night, predators come out, night time is rest time, or at least hunker down time.

The second meal they eat quicker. More rice but there’s a little bit of meat too, some scraggly potatoes that taste bland in their mouth. Food lost its taste sometime during the second decade, they think. When all the old rations finally ran out and food wars started for real. So much killing for food, and they glutted themself in the aftermath.

The pup watches them with flittering eyes. Taking in the man they call Max. They know the story of Imperator Furiosa is passed down through the pups, though it hasn’t been long enough for a whole new generation. The pups all know Furiosa, but they’re less clear on who this man was. They know he's a blood bag, he has the brands and tattoos but the Wives and Imperator care about him so much, they give him supplies for nothing, how could he have ever been a blood bag?

Maybe he was a son of the Joe. A cast down son that rose up with the Wives, his mothers? The pups don’t know and they think it’s better that way. Lets them slip out of reality easier, be eccentric easier.

“Go, off,” they grunt when their plates are clean. The pup scampers off with something like a smile, taking one last glance at the car as he runs. All around them war boys are bunking down for the night, finishing their projects and climbing into their hammocks. The lights dim, the electric buzz fading, and then it’s night time.

Furiosa will be back in three day’s time, but they plan on leaving before then. Would have liked to see her they think, see how their blood was treating her, but they’re running low.

They’ve learnt how to ration themselves in these wastes. Before the before, when they travelled through space, they hibernated between hosts. Reduced all functions to nothing and dreamed away the time between. Now, they have to be careful. There’s less and less people out here, less food to hunt, and they can’t risk being seen when they do.

They have to be careful who they take. Loners are all fair game, other scavs are even better. No one misses a scav, but a settlement? No, too risky, they have to wait for supply runs before they take someone from a settlement. And they will never take anyone from the citadel, they couldn’t and can’t.

Hungry though so they have to leave. They’ll probably ask to see a map before they do, say they want to trade or explore and head off on the hunt. Tomorrow, or maybe the day after though. Tonight, they’ll sleep in their car, same as so many nights before, and think about the books they brought for the women they call friends.

* * *

The sun burns their exposed skin, weathers and cracks it, giving them the wrinkles they should have by now. How old are they by human standards? Depends on how long since the before, then the years they might've lost in the after, and do they count since this body’s birth or since there bonding? The numbers jumble up and lose meaning until it doesn’t matter.

Midday finds them six klicks out from a biker settlement, hidden in a ditch and waiting. The land out here is deceptively flat, full of dips and curves that can hide entire gangs of people, but the wind still carries voices. The gang, a break away from the buzzards, is thinking about raiding the citadel.

Foolish thing to do, it’s too well protected, but people make foolish choices all the time. Like helping an uprising instead of riding off into the wastes on a good woman’s bike. These bikers are desperate, they need water, running out of it, but they never once think of trading for it. They don’t even think about asking, as though the Wives are the same tyrant God Queens as Joe was.

The plans are half-formed but they think they’ll let the bikers get any further than that. The gang is fifteen strong, but they’re also fifteen weak, and Venom is hungry. They’re always hungry now, a low-down throb that gnaws away at their bones.

“Our liver looks tasty,” they joke, voice breathy and broken, the way they remember it for so long. This is the voice of Them, not the Mad Max the citadel knows. This is the voice of places between stars and casual cannibalism, funny how the world falling apart made some things so much more acceptable.

The sun is just dipping past the edge of the world when the gang starts to split up, none heading towards citadel, but out looking for what they can find. Venom emerges slick black in the last dregs of daylight, opal veins shining like a technicolour sandstorm. They throw a tarp over their car, hiding it, and climb out of their dip on fresh, strong legs.

Feels so good to stretch their muscles again, throw their head back and roar loud across the wastes. No other creature sounds like them, is as loud as them, draws fear out of men’s bones like them. They are entirely unique, and they are entirely hungry, but they can still be stealthy.

They wait on the rise of the dip, a smear of black against the blueing sky, could be a formation out of place, could be a trick the mind plays. Two bikers gun towards them, circling close instead of straight on, smart people. Bikers are wary of threats, they have good manoeuvrability but no protection, so they come in slowly.

And Venom waits slower. They do not move, not even to breathe, as the bikes come within sight. Kicking up dust and chuffing close. In the dusk blue of the world, they could be mirages from a fairy story, knights riding for their princess. In the scent-sight of their mind, these are two delicious morsels coming right to them.

They wait, though their belly rumbles, they wait, though drool snakes down their chin. They wait until the first biker is swinging past them, arcing wide, and burst into motion. They clear the distance in one-two bounds, powerful legs carrying them far, and snatch the biker off his bike. The machine goes skittering, throwing up sand, and the biker lashes out with a knife, tearing into the meat of their mass.

They leer as their blood spurts, slower than it should, a burble instead of a geyser, and throw their head back in a roaring laugh as the biker screams. Their black blood lands on the man’s face, his clothes, in his mouth, and starts eating away at what it touches, sizzling. Their laugh echoes across the wastes, mocking and terrifying, and they lock in on the second biker.

This one is stupid. He doesn’t take the chance to go while his partner is burning on the ground, he charges them head on instead. Gun drawn, firing at them. A bullet grazes their cheek, and is healed, one digs into the muscle of their leg, and is swallowed. A particularly good shot slits their throat and splashes more blood on their poor partner, the one gurgling at their feet.

Healing is harder, less fuel in the tank nowadays, but they can do it faster than a human can see. When the biker swings in close, hoping to get one good bullet lodged deep in their heart, they take off his head. One blow, heavy and deadly, and their claws tear through the meat and muscle of his neck.

The one at their feet wheezes one last breath and falls dead. The night is heavy on their shoulders, quiet after the noise, but they hunker down to enjoy their meal all the same. Heads first, most important, what they need. So much harder to make their own brain chemicals in this dreamy after time, so much easier to take from others.

Skulls crack and crunch as sweetly as they ever have, one good thing that these wastes haven’t taken away. The bikers taste like sand and gas, same as everyone out here, but their meat is good, no disease lurking in their flesh and radiation free. Venom slurps up guts and drinks down blood, smacking their lips with relish and lapping up the spilt drops on their claws.

Two bodies are a good meal, much better than they expected way out here, and there’s thirteen more to track down. Not yet though, better to wait until they’re hungry again. Means sticking around this place though, and tighter security next time. The bikers lost two members, they’ll be on the alert now, though maybe not _as_ alert if they can’t find the bikes.

Venom, lord it’s good to be Venom, spends the rest of the night taking apart the bikes and burying the useless pieces. Nothing much in the way of barter but a few weapons are good, bullets, and there’s water. They stow the clothes in the car, clothes are always good, and they move everything down into another dip just as the sky pinks up and warms for the day.

They retreat into their human skin for the day, cover up the car and crawl into the driver’s seat with a gun clutched close. They don’t need to sleep, not for a good few days, but rest is nice. Drowsing on themself, remembering planets far and away from this one. Like having living memories play out across their eyes, keeping them calm and cool while the temperature climbs to unbearable.

An ice planet, covered over in yellow-pus snow. Moving through the snow as a creature like a spider, furred, more hands and less eyes, but still a spider. Huge though, can’t forget how big, bigger than the car, and so fast, especially when they bonded. What was that creature called? Something this mostly-human mouth of theirs can’t say so they call it Ice Skater, because that’s what it was, sort of.

They dream of skating through the hottest parts of the day, of ice-cream cold and sweet on their tongue. Sitting under a tree with someone, someone they loved, and stretching sticky lips in a smile, licking up dripping drops. They would kill the rest of this world for an ice-cream, chocolate flavoured, rich and heavy on their tongue.

When the sun sets, they’re mostly delirious, humming songs that make no sense. The bikers are further away but not far enough and when they slink out of the car. This time they catch three. Like a spider again, creeping through the shadowed divots and swells. They pick off those three one by one, killing them silently and eating their belly full.

By the last four, they’ve glutted themselves and the bikers are terrified. They know something is out here, hunting them, but they can’t guess what. No animal would be so meticulous, and no person could sneak out into the wastes without a vehicle. There’s no tracks to find, no threat to kill, only a bogeyman in the dark.

And when Venom comes for those last four, catchs them huddled around a fire that’s a star in the dark, they roar and shriek. They eek out every last drop of fear, make the men piss themselves with it, before they finally finish the whole gang.

Once upon a time they only killed bad people, played fast and loose with morality but kept their ideals. Now, all’s fair game. Good people don’t exist out in the wastes, not good like the before. People kill out here as a matter of survival, they leave others to die, they torture them, and all to live another day.

Venom is a monster hunting murderers, and at the end of the world, Venom is the only winner.

* * *

Coming and going is how they live, they do not settle. Even when they lived amongst stars, they never settled, so why should they now?

They prefer life on the road with no company but their own and the ghosts that haunt them. Nothing but open stretches of flat brown-yellow for miles and miles in every direction. The wastes are even beautiful, in a way, chock full of blazing colours everywhere they looked. Blinding yellow sand, sharp blue skies, sometimes they spot a scraggly piece of green sitting in the dust, or they’ll see the outline of a bird wheeling high overhead.

There's storms out here too, impossibly huge sandstorms full of lightning and death. Sometimes they go charging in without any vehicle to protect them, just to feel the sand grinding their skin away to the bone, to see the blood red clouds and white hot lightning. Sometimes they let themself get swept up into the churning tornadoes, slammed into walls of sand until they're battered and broken. Takes them hours to put everything back together again but it's worth it, a few minutes of wild exhilaration are always worth it.

The wastes can be beautiful, and they can be silent like the spaces between stars. Right now there’s the engine revving like a caged thing, roaring for release, slamming against the bars and shaking them. Reminds them of long rides into the night on a motorcycle, flying through a lamplight city with nothing but each other for company.

When they kill the engines and hunker down though, there’s nothing. Their own blood pumping in their veins, their own breath loud in their chest; maybe they’ll hear a lizard scurry by but what else is there? Nothing out there, and it’s why they like losing themself in the waste. There’s peace in a silence that’s never truly silent, isn’t there?

“Of course, Eddie,” Anne says from the backseat, smiling at them in the sliver of rear-view mirror. They glance at her through the glass, desperately drinking in everything about her before she leaves again. The curve of her smile, the pale, untouched skin of her cheeks; she’s perfect.

But they’re mad, aren’t they? Just another part of this crazy world they’ve found themself in. They see ghosts, smiling so pretty from their backseats, brown eyes lit up so bright, and something in their chest aches. Maybe it’s their heart, and they have to grip the wheel extra hard to keep going. There’s nothing to run into out here, not a thing for miles and miles, but getting distracted is dangerous.

There’s bands roving around, good at sneaking close when you least expect it and in the heat of the day Venom can’t play.

 “Gotta keep your eyes on the road buddy,” Dan tells them, and there he is, in the passenger seat. He doesn’t look like they remember, neither does Annie. They aren’t new parents with crow’s feet around their eyes and deep etched laugh lines. They aren’t older anymore either, Annie and Dan are as young as they remember them.

Annie’s hair is spun gold, fine and silky in their mirror. Dan’s eyes are clear and soft in their peripherals. They’re both smiling easy and casual like they haven’t been dead for…how long now? They don’t know anymore. Years stopped meaning anything after the drop, the sun got covered up for a while there, no way to measure that time, and now they count days.

“Doesn’t matter Eddie, we’re here now,” Annie laughs, leaning forward and reaching around their seat. They can **_feel_** her hands on their shoulders, fingers digging into the bone, hard and there and real.

“Yeah buddy, we’re with you,” Dan smiles, patting their thigh.

They shouldn’t entertain ghosts, they shouldn’t play along but…but they’re lonely, aren’t they? They miss their friends, their Annie and their Dan. Miss having dinner with them, picking scraps off plates when no one notices, listening to the flow and dip of their voices. They loved their friends, they loved them so much.

They should’ve protected them during the drop, should’ve made their way back home after they scraped themself together enough to move. Maybe they both survived, maybe the bombs never dropped there, maybe, maybe. They don’t know, and now is too late because Annie and Dan were human, and humans die. No matter how much you love them, humans die.

“We loved you too, Venom,” Annie and Dan say together, and they drive straight into a ditch.

Their world goes weightless, zero-g the way it hasn’t in so long. Wheels spin, engine roars but there’s no traction because they’re falling.

Annie’s fingers slip around their throat, squeezing, and they see her teeth bared in the same fanged smile they remember kissing. She’s deadly, dangerous, she was a good host, and she’s here to kill them dead. And next to them, Dan, he’s there still but he’s staring blank and cruel. He’s going to watch her strangle them, rip their throat out and drink the blood, and they deserve it.

If there’s anyone who deserves to die, it’s probably them. If anyone deserves to kill them, it’s these two.

Then their little piece of free-fall eternity shatters, or is that the window? They slam into the wheel, feel it pressing up against their sternum, breaking ribs, and grunt as the whole car jerks. Their head smacks against the door as they pitch back, skin splitting and blood burbling immediately, and they see beautiful black specks.

The fingers around their throat are…gone. They look around even though the car isn’t that big, nowhere for anyone to hide, not like on a war rig. They still look, swinging around to search the backseat, shoving at the clutter like Annie’s just behind their one jug of water. She isn’t, of course she isn’t and there’s nothing to prove she was ever there in the first place.

No bruises around their throat, no tears pricking their eyes. As they swing back around, a black tendril wipes away the blood, absorbs it back into their body, and retreats. There’s nothing in the passenger seat either and only an overflowing box of scraps on the floor.

They hiss as bones set themselves and heal over, calcium filling the cracks and connecting the broken pieces. The car is banged up, got a few new dents in her and missing a window now, but they know she’s seen worse. They got lucky, the crash wasn’t bad, barely a crash, more like a sudden stop with a little drop thrown in.

Doesn’t stop their heart from beating against those newly healed ribs, or the burn in their lungs as they pant. Annie and Dan, Dan and Annie.

“We miss them,” they whisper, clutching at the wheel, forcing their closed-up throat to open just enough for a few sips of air. Tentacles spider across their torso, curl along their hips, hugging them tight, holding them together.

“We do,” they wheeze, trembling in their own embrace. No one but them now, no one but them left. Nothing but wastes for miles and nothing but their own ragged, jagged heartbeat to fill up the silence.

* * *

Finding their way back to the citadel is harder than it should be but they’re delirious and dehydrated so cut them some slack. They drove into three different ditches and ate a mangy feral cat on last stretch here, they think, they don’t know. The heat is too much, wavering and dancing in front their eyes like lem worms, ready and waiting to strike. They swing wildly at one and hit a citadel outpost instead, sending a shock running up the length of the thing and terrifying the scouts at the top.

“Medic!” a pup yowls when they’re finally identified, by the brand on their neck because their face is a mess of dirt and hair and blood. Not theirs, tastes too human to be theirs.

They want to collapse while the lift trundles down but the panic’s settled low in their gut, fight or flight, and they don’t want to slaughter these people. These are their friends, they know that, even if their instincts tell them to run, or eat. Eating is good and they are very hungry.

“Max,” a wife gasps, a pretty thing, slender, supple, _tasty_. A nibble, what’s a nibble? An arm, a leg? What about a hand and those smart little fingers? Our belly is empty darling, we need _food_.

“Water, he needs water,” the wife tells a pup that tears off into the maze of the citadel. No one tries to touch them, smart, but they don’t know what to do either. And we’re **_hungry_** , please darling, can’t we have just one?

“Food,” they growl, bass deep, boots on gravel. The wife flinches, heartbeat ticking up, a pup gasps and reaches for a weapon, ready to defend her. Smart, very smart, their instincts are good.

“Food and Furiosa,” the wife assures them, blocking them from the rest of the room with her body. Brave little thing, protecting the pups physically though she’s weaponless. They’ll have to teach her better after, when they’re not drooling over the fantasy of tearing her heart out of her chest.

Hearts are sweet, remember darling? So sweet on our tongue, tough with muscle, soft with fat. We like sucking the blood out of them and eating them chamber by chamber. Nice and chewy, very good.

They lay against a dip in the rock, hidden from most of the walkway by the jut of stone and this waif’s body. She has pups around her, swarming, and they’re all barely a bite. If Venom unhinges their jaw and stretches, they can gulp up every single one of these tasty little morsels before anyone can stop them.

“Go, I’ll get him to the infirmary,” Furiosa says after…after a while. They’re too far gone to keep their eyes open anymore and they rely on what they hear, what they can smell. She smells like grease and gasoline, nothing like prey, and that makes it easy not to tear her throat out.

She takes the wife’s place, standing tall and strong in front of them, a pillar of muscle and metal but she’s not protecting the citadel from them. She’s protecting them from the citadel, keeping them boxed in with the wall to their back and no enemies to the front. Anything rushing at them will have to get through her, and nothing can get through her.

Strong, very strong. She has a part of them now, clinging to her cells, keeping her healthy and safe though it’s been hundreds-thousands of days. She’s almost kin and, for once, they trust kin.

“You’re safe here,” she murmurs, quiet but not soothing, she doesn’t have a comforting bone in her body. They think Joe broke any she might’ve had and cut them out of her skin. So Furiosa is not comforting but she tries, she’s _trying_. For a feral creature that’s drooling for her liver, how kind.

“Drink,” she tells them, holding out a metal cannister with her metal hand, very smart. They want to snatch it but they do not, they reach out tentatively and curl their fingers around the smooth curve. When she knows they have it, she lets go and they shove the nozzle in their mouth, gulping down the sweet wetness too fast.

They’re hunched in on themself, guzzling down water as fast as their sand dried throat can manage, spilling some of it into their grizzled beard, and isn’t this familiar? They’re not under the sun this time, no gun in their hand and no mask on their face, but it’s the same, isn’t it?

“A warboy’s bringing in your car,” Furiosa says when they finally smack their lips and look at her. She looks good, much better than she did when they gave her their blood. There’s no black smear across her eyes and there’s a crow feather tucked into her scarf, no less dangerous but dangerous in a different way now. She’s not an Imperator but she’s not swaddle pup, or whatever her clan was.

“’nks,” they grunt, holding out the flask for her. They know she wants to ask what they were up to, how _they_ ran out of supplies. Scavs don’t do that, now do they. Scavs go ferreting around in all the deserted, left over pieces of the world and find ways to make the pieces work again. Scavs find water in dried out water holes, they eat whatever they find and they’re always so good at finding _something_.

Venom sees the question in her grass green eyes and smile under their beard. What would she say, oh great Furiosa, if they told her they got turned around after raiding a raider camp? Sneaking between the canvass flaps as nothing more than a slick shadow, tearing into throats and crushing skulls between their palms. They should have tested the brains before they ate but they’re never patient when they’re hungry, and aren’t they always hungry?

Radiation sick raiders couldn’t hurt them, poisoned brains or no, but it could turn them delirious. Sneak right back into their own immune system and throw them into a fever so high their own brains almost cooked in their head. They think they lost their water somewhere on the second day, trying to put out the fire in their head maybe. And they didn’t get the chance to scrounge around for food in the camp.

“Food,” the war pup whispers, holding the plate over his head like an offering to a God. Their nose crinkles and Furiosa’s eyes go hard, but not at the boy, he’s just a child and he still remembers Joe. They barely do but this boy does, it will take a while to unlearn a lifetime of worship and servitude.

“Thank you,” Furiosa murmurs, dropping her flesh hand on the boy’s head, patting him appreciatively. Oh but she doesn’t take the plate of stew, now does she? Does she want them to do it?

“Mmm ya,” they mutter, sliding down the wall until they’re sitting and not towering over the pup. The plate gets put in their lap and the pup scarpers off again, leaving them alone with Furiosa again.

“The Sisters are glad you’re back,” Furiosa says, crouching down, sitting next to them. There’s no stiffness to her, nothing to suggest they’ve been gone for years and years, ‘s good. They like her, would hate to let her slip away in between their roaming.

“They’ll want you to stay for the harvest.”

They jerk their head in something like a nod while they eat, shovelling thick stew in their mouth. Nothing’s tasted so good in their entire lives, not a single thing. The stew has actual vegetables, crisp and soft and flavoured so nice; these are proper greens grown in good, fresh dirt. And there’s meat too, slivers of it because there’s no more farming out in the end but there’s meat, and it complements the vegetables nicely.

All they’re missing is a piece of toasted bread to sop up the stew, aren’t they? Lightly toasted, golden with butter, just like Ina Garten said.

“You don’t need a medic.”

It’s not a question, Furiosa knows better, but they answer with a head shake. They’ve never needed a medic, only saw a doctor twice since they became Them. Furiosa didn’t ask a question but they can hear her muscles relax after their answer, it’s a subtle sound but she’s close enough to hear.

“Come on Fool, it’s almost dinner,” Furiosa sighs, patting their good leg and getting up. There’s no hand reaching down to them, no offer of help, but she doesn’t walk off to dinner. She waits for them to get the stiffness worked out of their knee and watches placidly as they claw their way up using the rock. She doesn’t say anything when bits of stone go crumbling away under their hands.

“Bring the plate,” is all she says before she starts walking, trusting that they’ll follow, and they do.

* * *

They don’t live anywhere very long, even when they want to. They remember a before time, when they weren’t Them, and heading out to a cabin on a lake with Annie. They went during the off season, skipped town for a whole week just for a break from everything.

For one whole week they were the only people around, they could be as loud as they wanted because no one could complain. They could run around naked because no one would see, they didn’t because it was cold, but it only mattered that they could if they wanted. The first three days were perfect, drinking hot cocoa by a fire, having so much sex; they were giddy in love back then and so ready to be together forever.

Eddie though, because they were human and they were Eddie back then, he got antsy after the fifth day. He’d never been somewhere so remote, Eddie was a city boy through and through and being so far from one was unsettling. No noise out there by the lake, nothing but the animals and Annie, and by the last day, he was rearing and ready to head back.

They remember the crawling under the skin feeling, sparking along their nerves, keeping them on edge. Back then it was because it was so lonely, now, it’s because they’re with so many people. They learned how to be alone with themself and nothing else, even with Furiosa and the Sisters inviting them to stay, they don’t think they can.

So, when they slip away before the harvest and come back a little before the next one, no one looks too disappointed. Probably because they're hauling a bag of seeds, probably enough for a forest if they're any judge. 

“Where’d you get it?” Furiosa asks in the hours after the Sisters twitter and flitter around them. A whole troupe of war pups come to collect the seeds and sort them out, careful careful under the Dag’s keen eye.

“Out, cross the salt,” they grunt, stretching their bad leg out. There’s no seasons anymore but there’s cold snaps and their bad leg can feel those coming. It’s a point of contention between them, this bad leg of theirs.

Happened a little after the first year, when they were still learning their way around the wastes. Got fuzzed while driving, trapped under the burning wreck a few minutes too long. They broke the leg in the crash and barely got out through the flames, the skin cauterized around the break and they were too disoriented by the fire to fix it. By the time they got their head together again, the thing went fuckin sceptic, nearly lost it, sometimes they think they should’ve.

Sometimes they think about just hacking it off, tie at the thigh and hack off just above the knee. It can grow back, if they’ve got enough food to hold them while it does, they can fix this bum leg of theirs up right. Part of them wants to try, the part that used to take risks like that all the time, badgering mob bosses, poking around dangerous people. The part that came from the stars doesn’t want to take the risk, no matter how much they argue back and forth.

“No, darling,” they mumble to themself, smiling their thin-lipped smile that usually precedes a full set of fangs. Not this time though, Furiosa’s here with them, come to see them while they hide mongst some barrels of beans. Technically they shouldn’t be here, it’s a pantry, pantries are where people keep food and people get very mad when their food’s messed with.

Furiosa isn’t mad, she didn’t even tell them to get out, she just nudged them around so she could have a seat on a barrel. She’s a little older now, a few more lines around the eyes but those are just as jewel green as they remember. They don’t think she’ll ever be a true Mother of the vuvalini, not like those old crones were, no, she’s something better.

“So…we could’ve made it?” she says, asks? They’re not sure, the words are quiet, almost reluctant, like she doesn’t want the answer she knows they’ll give. They don’t lie, never, even though it’d be easier.

“There’re brand new settlements, ninety days hard driving across salt, fifteen more across rock,” they mumble, stretching out their leg, rubbing the joint. They’ve got a scar there, long, jagged thing, healed over as good as they can. They don’t have many others, the one across their chest and out their back, one along their arm where the very last dregs of ink are clinging to their skin.

Could they have made it? Who knows now. The risk was too much the first time, the vast unknown out there, the comforting reality back here. Maybe they could’ve made it to those settlements, Furiosa and the war boy and the Sisters and the vuvalini, and Them. Maybe the vuvalni would have found the water the settlers out there did, maybe they could’ve been the ones to start planting out there where the salt had purified the earth some. Maybe not.

Maybe all they would’ve found was sour water and radiation dense sand, not a bit of salvation anywhere. They had supplies for a hundred and sixty days back then, enough to get across the salt but not enough to get back, they might’ve died out there. Or might not.

“Could we have made it?” it’s a question this time, and her voice’s gone hard, Imperator Furiosa now. Wheel in hand, war rig under her, a force to be reckoned with, and their friend. 

She’s asking the same way she asked if the other wife, the favourite one, was dead. Same disbelief, same longing, and they’ll answer the way they did back then. It’s the least they can do.

“Ninety days hard driving across salt, fifteen across rock,” with all the inflection they can muster up, which isn’t much. They glance up at her, seeing more than they should in the dark of the pantry, things she probably doesn’t want them to see but they do anyway.

Her face’s all crumpled up, eyes shuttered, lips pressed so tight together they’re white and bloodless. They know she’s thinking of the vuvalini they lost, the bait woman with the feathers, the one she touched heads with. The old seed keeper, the dead shot, all of ‘em died in the fight back to the citadel, they might’ve lived if Max didn’t convince them back here.

Oh but they might’ve died too, there's radiation out cross the salt. The people there are only there because they can't get cross themselves and they're making the best of it they can. Personally, they don't think those people will survive more than three generations, the radiation that's dissipated cross most of the wastes is thick and heavy there, they tasted it hot and mealy on their tongue. There's probably some radiation hanging round in those seeds they brought too but not enough to kill, nothing worse than what's already here. 

So maybe, maybe the old crones would've lived if Furiosa took them across the salt all that time ago, but maybe not, and they're living the good life now, aren't they? Because Max convinced them to get back here when the getting was good. Tricky, ain’t it, darling? She can blame them for making her come back here, or she can blame them for not letting her go out there, but facts is facts, life here is plenty good.

Look at the pair of them, they’re sitting in a pantry overflowing with the bounty of a good harvest. There’s space for Furiosa to sit on a barrel of beans and space for Max to stretch out his bum leg and rub away the ache that’s creeping up on ‘im. Not too bad for a few years’ worth of work.

“Don’t tell the Sisters,” Furiosa finally says, voice gruff and whisper quiet, and they nod. She probably doesn't see it but she doesn’t have to, now does she? She can trust them, she trusted them back then, didn’t she? For better or worse.

“Yeah,” they still answer, because she deserves that much at least.

* * *

Keeping track of time is hard when time means so little anymore. There’s immediate needs, food, water, human brains, but those don’t have any kind of long term deadlines. Here at the end of the world there’s nothing too pressing to get around to doing. No job, no anniversaries, not even a birthday to remember.

So when the Dag comes up to them, hair more silver than white, skin more weathered than soft, they’re caught off guard. She’s not, she’s not the young woman they met on the fury road, and if they didn’t know the smell of her herb infused skin, they wouldn’t know it was her at all. She’s **_old_** now, and they are not.

She comes hobbling up to them with a brace on her leg, from breaking it hundreds of days ago, and a sprog clinging to her pants, a great-grandchild. They know these things, all the finnicky little details, but they never…they forgot what they all meant. All those details are parts of living life, not just something standing out against the monotony of existing; it’s time passing.

“Don’t be shy,” she tells the sprog, a tiny little sprout of a thing with the white blond hair of her young woman self. The child’s clutching her pants and a piece of paper, rough in places, crumpled in others, but it’s serviceable. The citadel’s paper press has improved over the years, now everyone here knows their letters and numbers though they may not know sums or words.

“’ello Mr Max, m’name’s Rixy,” the sprog mumbles, voice pitched child-high and just shy of grating. They like the sprog already. Rixy, it’s a good name, not bad.

“mmm Rixy,” they grumble, trying to smooth out the gravel in their voice. No one here cares about it, whether they talk or don’t, the citadel knows Max the drifter as well as they know the Sisters. They don’t want to scare the sprog though, the adults have forgotten what monsters sound like, but every child knows about the monsters in the dark waiting to gobble them up.

“Yessir, Rixy, an I wanna thank you for protectin my nana Dag,” Rixy says with all the importance of a five-year old. Reminds them of Glory, grinning bright Morning Glory, reminds them of…’minds them of Mary. Sister, their sister Mary, with her bouncing yellow hair and bright blue eyes, always a smile for her kid brother.

Little Rixy has their confidence in her tipped-up chin and bunched up fists, like she could take on a whole pack of ferals with nothing but the skin on her bones. Something stutters in their chest, painful, and has them cutting their eyes away. A tentacle smooths along their tensed shoulders, hidden under their jacket, and a cool hand forms into their empty right one. They're one now but old habits die hard and they need touch almost as much as they need cool blood wetting their throat.

“She says you beat three ‘hole war par’ies and gave ‘perator Furi your blood,” Rixy continues, not minding how closed off they’ve become, little sprog just steamrolls right over it. And if that ain’t just like Mary used to be, not a thing could stop her once she got going… _Lord_ they miss her.

“An ‘elped grow the greens. I like the greens Mr Max, thanks for the greens,” Rixy finishes up, they know she’s done though they can’t see her. They’re too busy staring out at the expanse of the wastes, nothing but sand out there, it’s where they belong don’t it? Not here with this little sprog thanking them for something that happened lifetimes ago, not with this girl that’s not a girl that they saved.

Still, they’ve got manners, don’t they? Can’t look the sprog in the face but they grunt out something like “ _welcome_ ” and jerk their head in thanks. Doesn’t matter how underserved it feels, how they were just doing what they had to to keep on surviving. Can’t break the little sprog’s heart, there’ll be plenty of time for Rixy to learn about the ways of the world but not yet, not yet.

So they don't tell her the truth about that mad rush back to the citadel, how they weren’t being heroes, they were just _there_ , but they don’t say anything else either. And after a while the Dag shoes her child off, something about helping with the green beans. Then, it’s just them and the Dag and the desert.

“She’s the spittin’ image of her mum,” the Dag says after a while, settling into the sand next to them. They don’t remember Rixy’s mother, the Dag’s daughter, was that Joe’s sprog or someone else’s? They don’t know, the Sisters all had children and the names and faces melt together after a while.

They think they remember the first one, the Dag’s, last of Joe’s line. A squalling baby girl, never got a lick of sleep with her around, good lungs she had. Good lungs, blue eyes and a birthmark the shape of a flower on her left cheek. They think she was called Daisy or something, whatever the flower looked like to people who didn’t know what a garden was.

“Marigold’s girl Jessa died on us last year ‘n left her poor mite behind,” the Dag explains. They think it’s an explanation, they’re never sure, people just offer up random information sometimes and always expect them to do the same. What could they say?

Weather’s good, nice day for a gas run. We’ve been hunting a band of raiders for thirty days now, they’re all healthy and their livers are as juicy as we remember. We’re thinking about finding our way back to America, use the stars, walk if we need to, just to see what got left behind. We miss San Francisco, and Annie, she was in New York when it happened, but we want to go back to where we were happiest with her.

“Marigold ‘n Axle ‘n Lock,” the Dag counts off, tapping her leg with each name, “Marigold died of an infection, Axle ran off with a band of war boys, and Lock’s a scav now, like you.”

They don’t know what to say so they don’t say anything. They never thought the Dag was sentimental, but children do that, right? They can still remember Glory’s voice and little Tommy’s big, gummy smile, they can almost remember Marigold and then her Jessa. They remember little gifts they brought for those children, a set of bibs for Tommy and a knife for Marigold, death for Glory.

“When we rode together, I was six thousand, four hundred and twenty-eight days old, and I wouldn’t’ve put you over thirteen. Now I’m on the bad side of twenty-five thousand, a great-grandmother, and here’s you looking spry as ever.”

They stiffen where they sit, fangs breaking their fragile human gums and bleeding acid-sharp blood out into their mouth. The tentacle across their shoulder blades goes rigid and cold and disappears back into their skin. The Dag doesn’t sound accusing, doesn’t sound like she’s going to scream monster and attack, but who can ever tell?

Under their skin they’re covering up their bad leg, reinforcing the brace in case they need to start running. The car’s on the other side of the citadel but they’ve made it without cars before, they can take off into the desert faster than anyone can get a party out after them. Take a straight shot and don’t stop.

“You ain’t nothing human, are you Max,” the Dag says, not asks, she says because she knows. She knows and they have to **_go_**.

“Yeah, ‘s what I thought,” she mumbles as they get up, standing faster than the bum leg should let them, just a little taller than they are. They could…if she knows then…eat her.

“We need to get rid of her darling,” they whisper to themself, out loud or in their own head, they don’t know anymore. The words are just as rough and bitter either way. They don’t want to hurt her, this woman that was a girl they helped, they do not, but they will if they have to.

“Don’t worry smeg, we keep our secrets,” the Dag scoffs, and when they snap around to look at her, there’s the girl they saw on the rig. Hair more silver than white, dressed in tough leathers and smelling of herbs. She’s a mother now, and a grandmother, and a great-grandmother. She’s a Sister instead of a Wife, a keeper of seeds, and secrets.

She says she’s twenty-five thousand days old, but here and now, she doesn’t look an hour older than she did as a girl in white calling them a smeg. She smiles her old, sarcastic smile, and holds out the crumpled bit of paper Rixy was clutching tight.

She’s not pressing but she wants them to have it, Rixy wanted them to have it, and they’ve always had a soft spot for children. So they snatch the paper, _~~map~~_ , from her hand with fingers that are just a touch too sharp to be human. Then, they run.

When the Dag dies, they’re not at the citadel that keeps their secrets, but they know she's dead because she climbs into their backseat seat one night. A girl six thousand, four hundred and twenty-eight days old with eyes so much older throws open the door and scrambles on a seat that’s not really there. She shoves a map in their face and calls them a smeg but when she directs, they drive off into the quiet of the night.

* * *

The Dag dies, and she becomes their navigator.

Cheedo dies, and she meets them every time they make camp.

Capable dies and she brings a war boy with her. One with most of his paint smudged off and two bumps on his collarbone. Those two come and go, riding alongside in the old Interceptor. Sometimes they have passengers, a beautiful blonde girl with a big belly, other war boys, Glory.

Toast dies, and they only ever see her off in the distance with a band of war pups. She never comes to them, but she doesn’t ignore them either. When they feed, they see her on the edge of the territory, waiting back with her pups until the meal is over. And when they slink back to their car and their ghosts, she comes with her pups and cleans the sands.

All four Sisters die, and they never go back to the citadel that keeps their secrets. The Dag tells them they should, there’s one more person they’re waiting for, but it’s the only place they won’t let their navigator take them. The citadel was never _their_ home; the Sisters’, the Wives’, the war boys’, but not Venom’s.

Venom doesn’t have a home, and neither does mad Max the feral scav. They have ghosts but they never go to meet them, it’s not how these things work, if they work at all.

One night though, twenty-three thousand days after they first rode historic on the fury road, the Dag takes them there again. She directs them around the citadel with a scoff, but there’s a smile playing on her lips that they pretend not to see. They take the same path through the sand and dust, noticing ruins that weren’t there the very first time, but staying their course.

At the mouth of the canyons the war boy collapsed, the Interceptor is there to meet them. Capable with her fire red hair and her pale skinned war boy are there, the only ones in the car this time, grinning ear to ear and revving the engine as Venom draws close. Together they scooch through the narrow chasm, the Interceptor gets through fine, but Venom has to get out and carve out the rock.

They're hardly precise but they manage, using their claws to dig into the hard stone and pushing the car out of the way when boulders come crashing down. Takes them half the night, with Capable and her war boy, Nux, shouting encouragement from the top of the pile; with the Dag shouting playful insults from the car. The moon’s high by the time there’s room enough to get the car through and Venom is filthy with dust, but what’s new?

They shuck off their jacket, the nice leather one, and keep driving.

Halfway through the gorge, the Interceptor stops to pick up a blonde beauty with a big belly. Angharad, splendid as ever, climbs into the Interceptor and they’re off again through the gorge together.

They drive through the rest of the night into the light of the next day when ghosts would usually flicker and disappear like dew on the ground. They don’t though, when Venom looks across, because they are Venom now. Not Max the mad scav these people knew in life.

When Venom looks across the sand, the Interceptor is still there, kicking up its own ghostly dust and keeping pace easy. They can see Capable throw her head back with a laugh, hair blood red again, not a grey streak to be seen. They see Nux grinning at her, the girl he met and died for, then at Angharad in the backseat, the woman that changed him.

The Dag snaps her fingers at them, smile crooked when they realise they’re drifting off course. The drive lasts all day, and then into the first streaks of blue night before they have to stop. Venom doesn’t need much sleep, but they do need to move, can’t stay cooped up for so long, or they’ll go mad. Well, madder.

And when they climb out of the car, stiff legged and tense, there’s Cheedo waiting for them with a fire already going. They smile at her, this fragile girl, and smile wider because there’s no scars on her anymore. Not from a war party, not from a failed citadel raid, there’s no signs of living on her, which is appropriate.

They can’t tell if the fire she makes is real or just another trick of their broken mind, but it’s warm and feels good on their bad leg when they sit by it. Capable and Angharad curl up by the fire, twittering together like love birds from a world before, the Dag and Cheedo sit on top of each other, hungry for the company.

Nux the war boy sits with his back against the car, leaching the warmth of the engine into his aching half-life bones, and Venom, basks in it all. There’s no place mongst the living for them so it makes sense they’ll feel at peace sitting at a ghost's campfire. Food comes, from somewhere, and they all eat. Hard, stiff meat that does nothing for the ever-present hunger nibbling away at their cells, but it’s still good.

Then, with the moon high above them, they sleep, surrounded by ghosts, they sleep.

In the morning, Cheedo’s in their backseat, wrapped up in the Dag’s shift, and there’s children’s footprints all round the burnt spot where the fire was. Venom stands, stiff, and counts them all. Fourteen war pups, a full band, and a larger pair, Toast. This is the closest she’s ever come to them and they know she’ll never do it again. Last night was special. 

The sun breaks lukewarm for once and everyone piles into their cars for the final stretch. Through the bog.

Nux and Capable point and whoop when they get to the place that once grew a tree. The last husked out remains are even still there, waiting for them. Nux wants to stop, to remember, but the Dag slings a curse at him and they keep moving.

Everyone is quiet as they pass through the Once Green Place. There’s no crows this time, no men sifting through silt for something that’s not there. There’s barely any water at all and they almost get stuck in the mud as they make their way through. They make it though, by the skin of their teeth, and only because Nux leads them around the worst of the quagmire. 

“Bait,” they purr, mouth falling open in a too-many-toothed grin when the sand firms up under their wheels again. When they roll to a stop, a bare klick away from the beginning of the end of this journey.

Time’s passed, so much of it, but the tower is still there. Half swallowed by the sand but still glittering and glinting with bits of silvered metal and broken glass. There’s a woman up there, dressed in leather and feathers, waving lazily as the party crests the last dune. The Wiv- _Sisters_ pile out of the cars, running through the sand to meet the motorcycles gliding down the dunes just beyond the tower.

The Dag catches the Keeper of Seeds up in a hug so tight it would’ve broken her brittle bones in life. Cheedo and Angharad tackle the Valkyrie into the sand the second her feet touch ground, one woman that never made it here and one who almost didn’t come. They know Valkyrie got mowed down by the People Eater in the canyon, not so far away from where they lost Angharad, so maybe these women met each other in the after, or maybe not.

“She’s out in the desert waiting for you!” the Valkyrie yells, teeth barred in a bright slash of a smile. A challenge?

Well they’ve never turned down a challenge. Not Eddie, not Max, never Venom. They’re a proper war party by the time everyone piles back into and onto their vehicles, nothing but the roar of phantom engines echoing across the sand. Bikes of old women, leftovers of the before time, two cars full of women born and bred in the wastes. Nux is an outsider to them, but they don’t care, and Venom is…Venom is Venom.

The very last stretch of their journey is a race, between the Interceptor, between the motorcycles, between this new car Venom found. There’s a lot of screaming and hollering, shrieking and whooping, the women let loose in a way Venom hasn’t seen in a very long time. There’s no fear in them, no weariness, because they’re all dead. What can hurt the dead?

And them, what can hurt them? There is nothing out here, not one thing, so if they roar along with all the rest, guttural and alien, then who’s there to notice?

There’s no winner when they all skid to a stop at the edge of the salt, or there might be a winner but Venom’s not it so they might as well not have one at all. There’s no winner but there _is_ a war rig, shiny and chrome, waiting for them.

And standing in the shade of her rig, there is an Imperator. She looks exactly like the woman they tried to kill after getting tossed around in a sandstorm, same glimmering green eyes, same black painted face. She’s the closest thing they had to kin, the carrier of their venomous blood, but she’s not the only family they had.

“Fool,” she calls, waving her prosthetic at them, them gesturing up at her rig. They remember it, the closed in metal cab, the weapons stashed in every possible nook, and the wives crowded together in the back. Venom's brought the Sisters this time but the backseat isn’t empty, and their heart bangs against their bones painfully as they make out the people.

Annie and Dan, smiling and young, happy again. Then Maria shoves through the window, half hanging out; Maria, first human host, good woman, their friend. Even little Glory comes scampering around the side of the rig, curls bouncing with every step until she grabs onto Furiosa’s pant leg.

“Can we make it?” Furiosa asks, lifting Morning Glory up into the rig before swinging up herself.

“Ninety days across salt, fifteen more across rock,” they answer, voice floating on the wind to her.

“Sounds like a safe bet,” the Keeper pipes up, weathered skin smoothing out into a young woman's face. 

“Better than here,” Angharad says, throwing a playful smile at her Sisters.

There's a beat, a breath, where Venom and all his ghosts grin conspiratorially at each other then swing around as one, looking to their Imperator for their orders.

“Then let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come hmu at [darkeecofreak on heckblr](http://darkeecofreak.tumblr.com/) if you wanna chat about Ven or Max


End file.
